Just as movies advertise and promote the latest and greatest upcoming releases, you too can create and promote books by creating a book trailer. These are similar to a movie trailer and are designed to catch the viewers’ attention and spark an interest. “Coming to a nightstand near you!” book trailers are great because you can showcase something that has just been published or you can be retrospective and create a book trailer on a personal favorite.

These are really fun to make and are a chance for you to take all the skills you have learned from this book or from your other video projects and apply them.

Here are some tips and tricks:

1. The book trailer should be between 1 – 3 minutes.
2. Introduce the title, author and suitable age range of readers.
3. If possible, include a graphic of the cover page.
4. Give a brief overview of the book, but don’t give too much away as the whole point is for the person to pick up the book and read it. I just hate it when a movie trailer gives away the entire plot line.
5. Use your own voice and possibly a head shot when talking about the book.
6. It may seem obvious, but pick a book you have read and would love to do as your first book trailer. Your enthusiasm will naturally come through.

Write a script

Thinks about what you want to say and language you want to use. Remember that you are making a mini-movie so your script needs to have a beginning, middle and an end.

Storyboard

As always, create a storyboard. It is the perfect tool for laying out your ideas and getting your thoughts in order. I have covered this in the book. One thing I didn’t cover was thinking about music. Once you have your storyboard drawn out, start thinking about what kind of mood you want to create.

Music

Here are a couple of sites where you can get royalty-free music pretty cheaply.

I over the last couple of weeks have been experimenting with steadicams. This is some test footage I captured once I finished the build. I am thinking how I will use a steadicam in our next library video.